I can't force you to like making 1.1 games. But I don't see anything in the applet that you can't do in 1.1, so I don't think it is such a huge differance. Maybe you've got a personal grudge against 1.1, but how is it cool not to support it?

I agree, if you have a online game website and like to adres an as big as possible audience you'd have to stick to 1.1 compatibility. You can do a lot with 1.1 if you put some efford in it. But offcourse there's a point at which the efford would be too big. FX, we're looking at the possibilities available creating a webcam game in Java and it does look like we're better off not sticking to 1.1 Still we need to make it clear for 1.1 users they need to upgrade their jvm, its such a shame 1.1 jvm's don't do this themselves...

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Pop up any flash or shockwave game worth its salt and you immediately get a funky download progress bar.

Yes, It's a shame Sun never did good marketing for Java at that point. Shockwave and flash integrate much nicer in browser than java applets do. Java applet games are often asociated with dull quickbasic like crappy games.

What im currently working on is a very small loader applet, this loader applet displays a nice graphical loading screen, then it loads and caches the game files. If /when the nescesary files are available it instanciates the game using a custom classloader. Because this loader applet is 1.1 compatible, it can detect the users jvm version and if the game requires a newer version it displays a message to the user to upgrade their jvm. Downside is that because it needs to be signed to do caching / implement it's own classloader, it will popup a security window. However, this does remove a lot of the most frustrating restrictions encountered when developing applets!

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Just add progressbar ="true" to the applet tag. It should give you a nice progress bar showing the applet loading. To make it even more interesting, you can use the image="myimage.png" attribute to display an image while you're waiting for the applet to load. You can even use an animated GIF!

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know, I'll definatly include that in the applet tag for 1.4+ users.

You know, Cas, it strikes me that since Puppytron is no longer an applet, AND it uses LWJGL, AND you've put a lot of work into it already, why not just make it fullscreen, add a better title screen, and give each level a techno background. Then you could add it to your regular product lineup, and sell it for mucho dinero. :-)

True, it's a lot like Alien Flux, but not so much so to turn people off. In addition, you'll have more games to attract users to your site, AND you can pander to the Robotron 2048 fans. :-)

No need for all that Paypal rubbish, just go to the Puppygames shop and pick appropriate currency. VAT is included in the "donation"

And as for adding more stuff to it and turning into the usual "extravangza" - well, it doesn't really need it. I want to write a few more of these little "desktop games" and see how they pan out in terms of sales and "profits".

Uhm... it's the only option I have. I don't know anyone with a CC. Oh and those numbers *are* from the puppygames shop.

As a customer I feel totally cheated. I wanted to pay $4.95 and I'm asked to pay $8.82 or even $9.48 if I click on euro first and change that to dollar.

Nurium games for example uses a PayPal buy now button. Page says $19.95... I click the button and I'm asked for $19.95. That's how it should be. (Well, it also means it's manually processed by the developer)

Really quite addictive. Definitally one of the more fun titles to play in its class. Despite its simplicity, there are a lot of tricks to learn - having changable bonus items is great, you have to decide what you want, and if you can afford the time to change it to what you want.

criticism:

* I don't like the music (if you can call it that), it gets a bit annoying. A corney, 4 track MIDI would be pretty cool though * Regarding sound effects, personally I don't like the reuse of AF ones, it gets confusing (as they mean different things).* I'm not sure if it is correct to call the registration a donation since the registration is compulsary after the third launch. In my eyes, donations are optional things, where as in this case it certainly isn't* Is there a pause button? If not, can I have one pleease?* What about a suiside button? (yes, it is quite easy to die anyway, but still, one would be handy)* In OS X, I can't seem to close the app without killing it

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